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Nintendo's Net Income Down 74%; Wii and DS See Sharp Decline

It's almost customary that when one company announces something shiny and new, its competition does something to extract all of the positive attention for their side of the fence. Call it bad timing but Nintendo didn't follow custom.

Just as Sony was revealing the super-powered successor to the PSP--dubbed NGP--and its plan to bring unspecified PlayStation content to the Android marketplace, Nintendo revealed its financial results for the first nine months of its current fiscal year. According to the report, net income dropped to ¥49,557 million ($596.7M) versus last year's ¥192,601 ($2.3 billion).

As today's fiscal report adds the third quarter results to an already declined first half, Nintendo maintains the drop (totaling 74.3 per cent) is still due to exchange losses and the appreciated yen.

Revenues also dropped nearly 32 per cent to ¥807,990 ($9.7B) for the nine month period ending December 21, 2010, versus the same time last year.

Specific to the newly added Q3 results, Nintendo's profits for the quarter (October to December) were down 46 per cent. Nintendo's operating profit for the period was listed as competitive to Sony and Nintendo at ¥104.3B ($1.3B), down from ¥192.3B a year ago.

According to the report, the drop in the company's reported Q3 was thanks to declining sales of Nintendo's (let's face it, they sold a ton already) Wii and DS gaming systems.

In more positive news, Nintendo did not (once again) adjust its operating profit forecast, leaving it securely at ¥210B. The sales forecast had previously been altered when it became clear Nintendo would not bring its new 3DS handheld to market in time for the holiday season.

With a late February release of the system in Japan, Nintendo now has an opportunity to sneak some of its 3DS profits into the end of its reported fiscal year. Nothing offsets losses like a highly-anticipated new gaming platform! That is if the people of Japan buy a lot of 3DS units in one month. (Spoiler Alert: They probably will).